Debutant director turned writer Samjad takes one of the more famous Agatha Christie novels and reskins the basic plot to set it within the office of an IT company. The result is a clever mix of recontextualization, ludicrous plot turns, and some flawed acting, leading to a mostly engaging and intense film with a compelling whodunnit.
Golam (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
What was the inciting incident?
“Golam” opens with a quote from the director himself: “In crime investigation, the truth often resembles a sphere; there are no sharp corners to hide behind.” The quote seemingly reveals the origin of the movie’s eponymous title, but it also depicts a charming narcissism necessary perhaps for a debutant writer turned director to assert himself.
The opening sequence follows the protagonist of the film, ASP Sandeep Krishna IPS (Ranjith Sajeev), as he steps out of his SUV, walks inside his house in the dead of night, undresses while applying aftershave over a cut on his forehead. He converses with the SHO about a case they had just solved before falling on his bed, exhausted. This entire sequence is equivalent to a muted “mass entry” showcasing the determination of an assistant police officer to be so hands-on in a case with a strong code of morals. As it turns out, those codes would be tested in the following case, which Sandeep would have to investigate.
The movie then introduces us to the employers at V-Tech, a subsidiary of V-Pharma, an IT company. The employees are usually led by manager Rajeev KV (Ansal Palluruthy), but they ultimately report to the MD of V-Tech, Issac John (Dileesh Pothan). On that eventful day, John would be agitated because of one of his employees’ late comings and goings before finally having to go to the bathroom because his coffee machine malfunctioned and sprayed coffee all over his shirt.
It was later that concerned Rajeev would walk out of a conference room, where he had been busy in a meeting with a web designer, Aravind (Pranav Ekaa), and bang on the bathroom door. Not getting a response, the employees would finally open the door with a master key to find John dead, blood spooled out of the head hurt by the fall, which had presumably led to his death.
What does Sandeep suspect?
The City Police Commissioner, Babu Thomas IPS (Srikant Murali), instructs ASP Sandeep Krishna IPS to investigate. The deceased, Isaac John, is a close friend of Minister Sudeesh Mothedan, so the case needed to be handled accordingly, without much hassle. Krishna’s problem becomes the particulars of the case; initially, the case had been presumed to be accidental death, which the CI Abdul Raheem (Alencier Ley Lopex) wants to stick by.
Moreover, the lack of any symptoms of confrontation removes that from the realm of possibility. At the same time, the presence of Deriphylin Retard tablets reveals that the deceased had been suffering from COPD. According to Sherly, the chief forensic officer, the COPD could have caused severe breathing problems, while the low temperature in the bathroom could be due to the moistness of the area as well as the confined space. Finally, the coffee powder had been tested, and there had been no signs of poison anywhere in his body.
However, Sandeep’s suspicions had been aroused. First, the inquest team discovered a piece of toilet paper shaped into a thin rectangle, examined the blood and the scratches on the doorknob of the toilet, and finally, brought in a locksmith and learned that the lock was perfectly okay. That, coupled with the fact that the door had been very close to the wash basin and had been unable to open, meant that the person hadn’t been able to get up after the fall as the body hadn’t moved. Blood was only agglutinated in a single space due to the bathroom floor not being slippery. Thus, he suspects this to be a case of murder, and their prime suspect is John’s partner, Gibson George (Sunny Wayne).
The police would confiscate all the employees’ phones as evidence, and then all the employees would be individually questioned. While questioning Rajeev in front of the employees, Sandeep learns that none of them heard the sound of a fall or anything from inside the bathroom, as Sindhu, the woman hired to clean the office space as well as serve the employees beverages and snacks, had been hard at work cleaning the office floor with the vacuum cleaner, which had muffled out the noise. The washroom, after all, had been for the exclusive use of the MD Isaac John, with the employees using the one adjacent to that.
Sandeep, meanwhile, conducts individual interrogations in John’s office rather than the conference room to keep the employees off-balance. While questioning, he would also smell the outstretched hands of the employee and look for marks under the fingernails to identify whether any of them had used gloves and white powder, as those smells aren’t removed as easily by simply washing the hands. He learns a couple of things:
- Neena (Sheetal Joseph) has sleeping pills that she bought last week from the medicine store near her house at Pallimakku.
- Fayas (Niyan K. Alex) reveals that John was a taskmaster in terms of work but didn’t show any arrogance. He informs Sandeep about a quarrel John had with one of his employees, which led to John having a coughing fit.
- Sebastian (Praveen Wishwanath) admits that he and a couple of his friends go to have tea outside the office premises because of its quality and the freedom afforded for smoking cigarettes. Sandeep also points out that one of Sebastian’s fingers has a recent scratch, which he reveals had occurred due to a stray plywood.
- Aravind would panic and try to escape, eventually being caught by the police on a count of attempting to hide the packet of weed inside the bag he had been carrying.
Gibson George finally arrives at the office from Thiruvananthapuram. Upon questioning, he informs that the business shared between John and himself would be legally inherited by John’s brother, Evan John since Isaac John had no kids and had been divorced twice. Asked if John had any enemies, George can only remark that in this line of business, all their competitors are treated as enemies.
How is Dr. Kuriakose involved in this investigation?
Sandeep, while taking a cigarette break, would notice a familiar scratch on one of the cars at the parking lot—a spiral shaped like an ice cream that would usually be done by Dr. Kuriakose’s granddaughter—because she had scratched that same scrawl on the side of his car. Like clockwork, Sandeep receives a call from Praveen, who informs him that Sheetal’s medicines had been prescribed by Dr. Kuriakose, the same neuropsychiatrist with whom Sandeep is associated. Further questioning Arun, whose car adorned the scratch Sandeep had seen, Arun lies and says his son did it. This further spurs Sandeep’s suspicions, and he checks Arun’s phone, which later correlates with the phones of the other employees as well, finding a common link: Dr. Kuriakose.
Instructing CI Rahim to keep the employees within the premises until he returns, Sandeep drives up to Dr. Kuriakose “Kurien” Chemmammam’s house, who had been friends with Sandeep’s father. Sandeep tries to use that relationship to his advantage, mentioning V-Tech’s name and noticing the slight hesitation on Kuriakose’s face before denying having known or interacted with any of the employees within V-Tech.
But seeing his eyes light up in recognition upon hearing Isaac John’s name and the news of his death confirms Sandeep’s involvement in this crime, at the very least implicitly. It’s when Sandeep equivocally states that he knows Kuriakose is involved in treating all the employees of V-Tech, just from the evidence. He is more than capable enough of understanding the minutiae of the case moving forward that Kuriakose finally relents.
What is the true purpose of V-Tech?
Dr. Kuriokase reveals that one of the employees of V-Tech, Meera, had been his wife’s patient, Dr. Rachael Kuriokase. Meera would suffer stillbirth inexplicably, having died 24 hours before she complained of pain. The consequent depression that Meera undergoes moves Rachael enough to convince her husband to look into the matter. The testing of Meera’s blood samples reveals the presence of a foreign agent in her blood. While the research was being conducted parallelly on Meera’s blood samples, Dr. Kuriakose was visited by two other youngsters, complaining of sleeplessness and headaches.
Upon realizing that they also worked at V-Tech, Kuriokase had their blood samples tested, which came back with the same result: a foreign agent in their blood. The only common factor connecting these patients is the workplace. Further questioning would reveal symptoms exhibited by almost all the employees: Arun’s hair loss and Fayas’ deterioration of eyesight. Requesting all the employees to come to his house, the good doctor is shocked to find the situation being far worse than he had imagined, with fingernails falling off, the security guard with one dead eye, extensive hair loss, severe pain in one ear, and memory recall reducing drastically. Testing their blood samples revealed that same foreign object, which the doctor could definitely proclaim as a mutagen capable of altering the DNA of any individual.
Now, considering that Meera had been very careful and equivocally hadn’t perused drugs due to her pregnancy, the question arises as to how the foreign agent could enter the employees’ bloodstream. One option could be the centralized AC system, but Kuriokase confirmed the chemical compound had been ingested. Testing the water and the food being served to the employees at the office confirmed the horrific truth.
Kuriokase then reveals through a perusal of the internet and his own experience dealing with V-Pharma, the parent company of V-Tech, that Issac John is their co-founder, with the license of V-Pharma that allows them to manufacture their own products registered under Evan John, Issac’s brother. After getting files from John’s computer by requesting his employees to conduct mild espionage, he comes across a blueprint of the punching machine in their office.
Ostensibly a biometric scanner, the punching machine surreptitiously acts as a delivery system for a virus named HMV (Human Mutagent Virus). Its antidote would be delivered to the employees via the food and drinking water being served to them. As a result, the V-Tech office is a closed-off sociological and pharmaceutical experiment, with the employees acting as unwitting guinea pigs for V-Pharma.
Who was responsible for Isaac John’s murder?
Because they had been fed first-stage vaccines in the form of medicines, the diseases that had sprung up in the employees were incurable. While Dr. Kutiokase had tried his best to treat them, the employees weren’t interested in handing them over to the authorities. As it turns out, the employees would reach a drastic decision: they would take the life of their MD as punishment for what had been done to them. Considering that John had removed the punching machine and started bringing in water cans and food from outside, it stands to reason that he has collected enough data and is now covering his tracks, and thus, the evidence collected by the employees wouldn’t hold water.
Sandeep’s later deep dive into the investigation, after he lets the employees go upon returning to the office, reveals that the total time each of the employees escaped being noticed by the CCTV camera is equal to the total time John took to die after getting into the toilet. This is too coincidental to be unplanned, and Sandeep realizes he has finally solved the case.
A flashback sequence reveals that each employee had taken a specific step to ensure the plan went off without a hitch. One employee would come late into the office to close off the exit pipe from the hatch with a soft cloth and a hole through which a nozzle could be passed. While the security guard would burn all the plastic waste to create an air of smoke, the crime scene would remain unnoticed. Meanwhile, inside the office, one of the employees would enter early and dodge the CCTV. Then, a roll of toilet paper shaped like a rectangle is inserted to ensure John’s bathroom door remains locked once he is inside.
Meanwhile, the servant working the floor would damage the coffee machine just enough to spill coffee on John’s shirt. A meeting would be scheduled so that Rajiv, who is still loyal to John and George, would be kept busy. Meanwhile, another employee would insert a hairclip designed with grooves similar to John’s bathroom key and ensure the door remained locked so that John could not open the door from the inside.
Once that deed is done, John is locked inside the bathroom, and the servant starts cleaning the floor using a vacuum cleaner. Meanwhile, outside, while three of the employees would apparently be enjoying their tea and snacks, one of them (Sebastian) would surreptitiously sneak to the back, open up the CO2 gas cylinders, and direct it inside the toilet air ducts. Once time has passed, and John has passed out and died, the pipe would be removed and hidden, and the cloth covering the pipe would be removed. Inside the office, the hairpin used to lock the door from the bathroom would be removed.
Golam (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Who are the main culprits behind this crime?
Sandeep does understand the reason behind such a drastic step and thus writes up the cause of death as accidental, keeping the employees away from the eyes of the law. Meanwhile, taking Dr. Kuriakose’s advice and the information obtained from the pen drive, Sandeep investigates the top-secret lab of V-Pharma, where clinical trials are underway. The movie ends with Sandeep discovering the lab at Kaalapur Forest and climbing onto a truck carrying the raw materials inside the heavily guarded lab without being discovered. Meanwhile, Gibson George, who is also involved in this project, takes the position of MD from John and garages himself in John’s office, with all the employees eyeing him with barely concealed rage.
The movie teases a sequel with a promise of something big. Considering how it manages to recontextualize a seminal Christie novel like Murder on the Orient Express with a pulpy Indian bent and shades of a science-fiction thriller like chemical espionage, it stands to reason that this movie’s sequel would also be engaging from a screenplay standpoint. It’s the acting that would need a bigger boost.
